Broken bolt extraction revisited

bison

Well-known Member
I bought a flexycoil double shoot disc airseeder the other day.
It needed new scrapers/seed guides installed on the seed discs as they were all but worn out but loosening the two 5/16 bolts threaded into the strut were all but rusted in and 90 % of them broke right off flush or nearly flush with the hole.Now a couple broken bolts i can live with but 80 of them gets a little old fast.
It took me 2 days to extract them all. Most of them came out with welding a washer to the stub and then a nut to the washer and then heating up the surrounding area red hot with a brazing tip.I also wacked them good and hard a number of times on the head to try vibrating them loose. Some of them were more difficult and required a second or even a third attempt as they refused to budge and broke off again. About 10 out of the eighty i could not get and had to be drilled out and re-tapped.

Some pics.
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I have to wonder why after the first few you did not just heat the castings up with a torch before even trying to remove them ?
I hope you put neverseze on them.
 
A few weeks ago , me and a friend changed out
the radiator core in a Case DC. Just hitting the
bolts and spraying with Kroil got most of the
30 or so out , but 4 broke off in the tank
casting . We used the weld a washer & nut trick
on them , along with a strong hammer blow , and
all 4 just snapped off , and had to be drilled
and peeled out with a pick . I'll try it again ,
but was very disappointed.....
 
(quoted from post at 12:15:18 06/20/16) I have to wonder why after the first few you did not just heat the castings up with a torch before even trying to remove them ?
I hope you put neverseze on them.
ook at the first pick, how would i get that heat to the casting???

I use never seize on every bolt i laid my hands on,...I wish everybody would do that,including the factory....would save a lot of people a lot of grief.
 
(quoted from post at 12:59:39 06/20/16) Left hand drills will usually walk a bolt out with out the need to weld.
The ones I just did!,...not in a million years.
Left hand drills work only on bolts that are loose in the bore.
 
Next time the first bolt breaks, get out
your acetylene torch. Heat each bolt head
cherry red before you take a wrench to it;
they'll come right out. No need to heat the
casting.
 

I use an arc welder , stick the electrode onto the bolt head and just let it hum for a short time . This heats the bolt and the bolt only . After it has cooled it is usually loose , the expansion from heat inside the hole squashes the corrosion and gives you that minute gap needed to get it moving .
 
(quoted from post at 15:47:10 06/20/16) Next time the first bolt breaks, get out
your acetylene torch. Heat each bolt head
cherry red before you take a wrench to it;
they'll come right out. No need to heat the
casting.
hat is exactly what i tried on the first few.
It didn't work as i was afraid it wouldn't but there is no harm in trying, these are grade 5 bolts and heating makes them soft as butter.

Folks i have been doing this kind of work for 50 odd years,. No offense but I did not ask any of you for advice,I know what works and what don't
I just posted this as a "show and tell" as there often are posts about how to get a broke bolt out and i removed 80 of them in a row this way( a record even for me). Anyone that says to use a easy out or a left hand drill obviously have no experience with it cause it DON"T work on bolts that are rusted in tight. Penetrating fluids(i don't care what brand or composition cause i tried them all) works only to lubricate exposed treads or shafts but in my lifelong experience it won't penetrate between the treads in the hole or between a collar or bearing or sprocket when it is seized on the shaft. One has to break the hold first with a hammer or heat or press or puller or a combination of all three and if that don't work then the grinder or the torch will get the job done.
 
(quoted from post at 16:04:37 06/20/16)
I use an arc welder , stick the electrode onto the bolt head and just let it hum for a short time . This heats the bolt and the bolt only . After it has cooled it is usually loose , the expansion from heat inside the hole squashes the corrosion and gives you that minute gap needed to get it moving .
hat has never worked for me yet,..all it ever resulted in is a molten electrode.
But maybe Australian electrodes and bolts are different material then Canadian steel :wink:
 

Could be Bison :)
A heavy electrode and low amps seems to work .
I don't envy the work you had to do , 80 times misery !
Still I suppose you had a good night's sleep afterwards .
 
I'm afraid I'll have to agree with you on penetrating oil. It seems to get through about 10% of the time. If you can get a bolt to move some and THEN put the penetrant it works a little better.
 

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